POEMS: ART AND BEAUTY (For Willy, Jun, and Al+)

A painting by Philippine National Artist Fernando Amorsolo

GIVING BEAUTY BACK

Transfigured, we come

Back to old haunts like the wind

And give back beauty.

---Albert B. Casuga

12/31/15

Poems for the Exhibit of Jun and Willy

TWO POEMS ON ART AND BEAUTY

(For Willie Buhay, Jun Alday, and Al Manrique +,

My San Beda College Students as Artists)




1. STILL LIFE

On the canvas, still life remains still,

but for the ravages of neglect and time.

For a little while, movement there will

come from light thrown off like mime
from palpable forms that are frozen
inexorably, dictates of chiaroscuro,
ideographic demands, or even unspoken
meaning jutting out of dashed impasto.
Will their narrative then lend them light
like the moon borrows from the sun?
How luminous will faces shine in sunlight?
Will flowers glow, will river streams run?
When these happen, will all the sparkle
Bound by bastidor* speak or mumble?
 

*Bastidor – frame


 2. AFTER ALL THESE YEARS



Imagine if all of us were caterpillars,
all inching toward that one branch
or leaf whence we spread our wings
to carry out a bounden duty of flitting
from one rose garden to a hillock
smothered by a rainbow of pansies:


Would we race to the highest branch
and shed our cocoon shackles quickly
to fulfill this raison d’etre of spreading
beauty where it is scarce or now gone?
 Imagine if all that we lived for were a
task as gleeful as this godlike whimsy.


Would we not scale beyond this boot,
and swing beyond this silken thread?
Or tear through bramble or grappling
gossamer webs that drag us down
even as we crawl toward sunlit fronds
to spread our wings and get beauty done?


Wherever beauty is, we will be there,
And if our troth be true, we will all
Be stuck there, too, spinning webs
of words, music that will outlive us all.




—ALBERT B. CASUGA
Canada, Deccember 31, 2015